City Council blasts Flanagan over plan to cut firefighters during debate on early retirement home-rule petition

Tuesday

Mar 11, 2014 at 9:59 PMMar 11, 2014 at 10:40 PM

Jo C. Goode Herald News Staff Reporter @jgoodeHN

FALL RIVER — With about 100 grim-faced firefighters and family members looking on, the City Council blasted Mayor Will Flanagan for his plan to slash fire department personnel by 34 percent with the pending expiration of the SAFER grant and what they asserted was mismanagement of the city’s finances Monday night.

“This administration has got to get its act together,” said City Councilor Daniel Rego, “accountability needs to be held.”

Rego said it is Flanagan who should be sitting before the council with an explanation.

Flanagan took the 213-member fire department — as well as many others, including members of the council — by surprise when he announced at the end of last month in that in fiscal 2015, he would cut 60 firefighter positions, leaving a complement of 153.

Until December, firefighters said Flanagan had promised the city would fund a fire department of 200 firefighters.

Two years ago, after receiving what was at the time the largest ever SAFER award, Flanagan pledged that he would work to fund the fire department without relying on grants.

City Administrator Cathy Ann Viveiros, who represented the administration at the meeting, said the financial team didn’t know there was no adequate funding for the fire department until they started preparing the budget in January.

The council was expected to vote on a home-rule petition for an early retirement incentive program for up to 30 firefighters. The incentive program would put five years toward retirement based on age and number of years firefighters have served on the department. The vote allows the petition to go before the Legislature.

As of 8:15 p.m., the council had yet to vote.

In an address to the council, Jason Burns, president of the firefighters Local 1314, said he had learned that, once sent to the Statehouse, the home-rule petition would be “dead in the water." Burns said he believed the solution could be found in the budget.

Burns disputed Flanagan’s claim that the city’s fire department, if staffed at a complement of 153, would meet national fire standards.

“This administration’s proposal to staff this department at 153 is, quite frankly, dangerous," Burns said. "There has been talk out there that our department would meet national response times. That’s just not true.”

Burns said that because the city has the fire load it has, with structures packed together tightly, the fire department needs additional resources.

It was a sentiment echoed by fire Chief Robert Viveiros.

“How fast they arrive on the scene, I can’t guarantee,” Robert Viveiros said.

The city will have to depend on mutual aid recalling staff after the layoffs, he said.

“Half-hour, an hour to get extra guys in and trucks — you lose a neighborhood in that amount of time,” Viveiros said.

City Councilor Michael Miozza said the city is losing its middle class and the people who pay for services like fire protection “aren’t here.”

“We don’t have an economic vision that I’m aware of, and if there is, it doesn’t appear to be working,” Miozza said. “There needs to be a change, and this council made recommendations on how to make those changes.”

Miozza quizzed Cathy Ann Viveiros on why the brunt of cuts in the fiscal 2015 “were put squarely on the firefighters.”

Several councilors offered some solutions to staff the fire department adequately, including a pay cut for all city workers.

The firefighters, said City Councilor Jasiel Correia II, are employees of the city who put their lives on the line, and said the pay cut option was an extremely strong one.